By MaryJanice Davidson.
So: in an alternate universe, Alaska was never purchased by the United States, and Alaskans fought for their own independence and won it from Russia. And they have a royal family. A wild, wooly, wacky royal family where they happily use swear words and go out fishing whenever the hell they want to and name half of the family Alexander-ish names. Naturally, reading People magazine about them must be fun...I love the Alaskan Royal Family premise, in case you didn't guess.
Anyway, the premise of this (aside from the Alaskan royalty) does start out...odd. An American orphaned cook, Christina Krabbe (the "e" is silent*), gets the boot from the cruise ship she's working on. Down to her last 50 dollars, she... elects to go on a fishing trip. As you do.** Now, the king of Alaska, Al, likes to take his subjects out on fishing trips while wearing a bad beard as a disguise. People inevitably figure it out while on the trip and then act all disturbed and scared or something. Al goes to chat with Christina, who is the only one not afraid of him*** at that moment in time, and she tells him her sob story. He invites her to work/live at his big ol' place, all his kids live at home anyway, so why not... And when Christina figures it out, she yells at him. For Al, it's true love of a non-romantic variety at first cuss word, and he decides that Christina should be fixed up with his oldest son, Crown Prince David. Because she's just the type he'd love to see on the throne after him. (Happily, Al doesn't care about the lines of succession-- he's got five kids and figures someone will produce a kid sometime.)
Al brings this up to David, who is a nice, nerdy marine biologist sort who spends most of his time with his penguins in the Allen Hall section of the castle rather than dating. David is all... "um, okay," and proposes to Christina a few times upon barely having met her. Christina declines a few times, then after talking with his sister, Princess Alexandria...decides to go for it.
Yes, this is rather odd for a romance novel. But David and Christina hit it off even if she's the only girl on the planet not into penguins, and get more and more attached to each other (plus boink their way around every closet in the palace) as the engagement goes on. Even the arrival of Christina's cop ex-boyfriend, who gets hired on as a bodyguard, doesn't really derail this train of love, no matter how much he tries. Which is nice. It's very subtle in how they get more and more romantic with each other.****
I will say this for the book: it does start out odd, what with the random arranged marriage and all. And Christina comes off as SO crabby (har) in the beginning that even I, a person who is naturally born cranky, wished she'd dial it down a notch. It is odd that she gets engaged to the dude, though you can figure out why since she's an orphan and fits in with the wacky Alaskan royals like a penguin to water. The family in general is quite adorable and what with the crazy cussing and all, is great fun and refreshing in a world where we think of the British Royals as the typical standard.***** But even if I'm a person who isn't into shoe shopping either, sometimes I was like geez, Christina, tone it down. Though after awhile you do enjoy her wedding priorities-- she makes it clear that she likes toned-down dresses and jewelry, but spends two pages listing the entire wedding food menu.******
But I will say that Christina does mellow out as the book goes on, shows that she's got a heart and can be nice to people (also enjoyable: Christina at therapy with a shrink who totally gets how to deal with her) without always having to show off how much of a dick she feels like being. And when a major challenge comes up after the wedding, she and David both rise to the occasion pretty splendidly. I have to give major props to Christina's use of blueberry pie...and that's all I'll say about that without spoiling because that's one of the best scenes in the book. So if you're feeling conflicted or irritated when you start the book, as I was, I advise you to stick with it. It's worth it.
I do have one quibble about the plot, which will be going below the spoiler cut.
All in all, this was a sassy, funny, and surprisingly heartwarming novel. It was adorable. In the end, I'm giving it four stars because despite my quibbles, I really enjoyed it.
* Alas, this "joke" gets massive amounts of overkill after...oh, once.
** Unfortunately, there's just no way to justify this crazy, so the author just kinda goes with it.
*** Beats me why they're afraid of him...okay, so the family's prone to craziness, but Al is nice! Al is freaking adorable, really. Love him.
**** I don't think I've ever seen a book before where we don't find out that the couple officially loves each other until page 250....after the wedding. Well, I guess Regency romances do that frequently, but you don't expect that in a book set in 2004.
***** Oh my god, the use of Queen Elizabeth in this book....!!!!!
****** Okay, that's tedious to read, but she is a professional cook. What else would you expect there, really?
More on ratings systems
On a related note to this:
Apparently some author blogged this weekend about the Amazon reviews system, basically saying that anything other than a 4 rating is a NOT RECOMMENDED review and that either you should post a 4-star or no review at all. This made me really glad that I stay the hell away from doing reviews on Amazon. Mostly because I get my review jones out over here under my own control and I can say a lot or a little as I feel like, but also because uh, some things need to be clarified. And I had no idea that giving someone a 3 there might as well be a one star, this is total crap review and I personally am totally sinking your book. Geez, really?
And again, three or 3.5 stars here does NOT mean "NOT RECOMMENDED." It is recommended, but with some reservations, or "this wasn't quite for me but it wasn't bad" qualifications. It's not a 100% yay, but it's usually about a 70-80% yay. "NOT RECOMMENDED" here is 2 or 1.
So there you go.
Posted on November 28, 2011 at 09:43 AM in Non-Review Commentary | Permalink | Comments (0)